I just been on the new ad site to try and get some form of decent presentation back. I thought a foolproof way of viewing my old ad would be to type in the tinyurl I'd set up for it: www.tinyurl.com/miniforsale. The advert has been taken down, and a misleading message is displayed (saying I'm a dealer, and the stock is no longer available). I'm pretty annoyed about this because I have the link going into a few magazine ads this month.

When I went to update the text, I ended up being asked to pay a tenner for posting the ad. I would happily pay that, maybe more, for an advert that:

Allowed me to use wiki-like formatting to enhance the presentation of the ad.

Allowed me to link from the advert to a nice big gallery of pictures on my Picasa account.

Had a URL that didn't change.

For me, all the features that made a PH ad better than any other ad site I know of, have been taken away. If anyone has knows where else I could post the ad that could get exposure to PH-type people, but has the features I've outlined above, I'm all ears. Shame the tedvertiser didn't work out.

You assume that all the HTML formatting makes a single jot of difference to people looking to buy your car, and we would contend that it doesn't. I'm not sure why you would try to login and go through all of this when you've already discovered that running html in copy isn't something we want in our ads, nor external links.

Both of those measures are purely to protect users from scam activity, and not punitive or aimed at antagonising you. However we aren't going to change this policy, so if this means that you decide not to advertise your car on PH, so be it.

1) performance is utterly abysmal2) searching for a 997 Carrera shows mainly 996's - not a format problem but mainly dealers taking the piss I assume.

The second one might be a temporary migration problem, but the chaps can take a look.

It's performing really well - anecdotally and according to the stats/monitoring. What are you using to access it, and how long has it been performing abysmally?

Browsing with Chrome - both last night from home which was unusable and at lunchtime today from work which was merely very slow! {just re-checked and it's whizzing along, might have been a lunchtime peak]

I've checked in the 'old' classifieds and a lot of 996's showing up under the 997 area , not sure if new and old share a database though so it could be a migration issue.

Browsing with Chrome - both last night from home which was unusable and at lunchtime today from work which was merely very slow! {just re-checked and it's whizzing along, might have been a lunchtime peak]

I've checked in the 'old' classifieds and a lot of 996's showing up under the 997 area , not sure if new and old share a database though so it could be a migration issue.

Thanks. We'll check the logs, but from looking at other posts in here we may have had some ad serving issues site wide which were causing the site to slow down. I must admit that when I go into the old site classifieds they suddenly feel very slow now that I'm used to the new.

I just been on the new ad site to try and get some form of decent presentation back. I thought a foolproof way of viewing my old ad would be to type in the tinyurl I'd set up for it: www.tinyurl.com/miniforsale. The advert has been taken down, and a misleading message is displayed (saying I'm a dealer, and the stock is no longer available). I'm pretty annoyed about this because I have the link going into a few magazine ads this month.

When I went to update the text, I ended up being asked to pay a tenner for posting the ad. I would happily pay that, maybe more, for an advert that:

Allowed me to use wiki-like formatting to enhance the presentation of the ad.

Allowed me to link from the advert to a nice big gallery of pictures on my Picasa account.

Had a URL that didn't change.

For me, all the features that made a PH ad better than any other ad site I know of, have been taken away. If anyone has knows where else I could post the ad that could get exposure to PH-type people, but has the features I've outlined above, I'm all ears. Shame the tedvertiser didn't work out.

You assume that all the HTML formatting makes a single jot of difference to people looking to buy your car, and we would contend that it doesn't. I'm not sure why you would try to login and go through all of this when you've already discovered that running html in copy isn't something we want in our ads, nor external links.

Both of those measures are purely to protect users from scam activity, and not punitive or aimed at antagonising you. However we aren't going to change this policy, so if this means that you decide not to advertise your car on PH, so be it.

Not even I would think that anything PH had done was to antagonise me...Maybe I went over the top with the formatting on my original ad, but not even having bullet points? Surely there's nothing bad that can come of that?

I know links are generally undesirable in user-generated comment, but is there no way that some sites - like Picasa, Flickr etc - can be whitelisted to be linked from an ad? I for one would find it very useful. I know that the PH hamsters are much more numerous and better trained than they used to be, but you still don't want to overload them by serving a load of pictures you don't have to. Let the picture websites take the load...

PS - I will accept the new rules as a necessary evil when trying to get my car advertised to the right audience, but surely you can see it's a little galling to be charged a tenner for what I consider a lesser product than that which used to be available for free?

PPS - The old ad is probably a record in a database. The new ad is probably a record in a database. How much work would it have been/now be to link the two URLs?

Not even I would think that anything PH had done was to antagonise me...Maybe I went over the top with the formatting on my original ad, but not even having bullet points? Surely there's nothing bad that can come of that?

I know links are generally undesirable in user-generated comment, but is there no way that some sites - like Picasa, Flickr etc - can be whitelisted to be linked from an ad? I for one would find it very useful. I know that the PH hamsters are much more numerous and better trained than they used to be, but you still don't want to overload them by serving a load of pictures you don't have to. Let the picture websites take the load...

PS - I will accept the new rules as a necessary evil when trying to get my car advertised to the right audience, but surely you can see it's a little galling to be charged a tenner for what I consider a lesser product than that which used to be available for free?

PPS - The old ad is probably a record in a database. The new ad is probably a record in a database. How much work would it have been/now be to link the two URLs?

Thanks for the response.

We just don't think that pics embedded in body copy make for a nice experience. The new site gives you more images (12) at a bigger size, and we reckon that's enough to make the phone ring, which is really all that it needs to do.

Bullet points and limited formatting, yes perhaps we should look at that at some point in the future. Fair point.

Your old ad should have a link on it to the new site, if that's what you mean by the PPS?

Not even I would think that anything PH had done was to antagonise me...Maybe I went over the top with the formatting on my original ad, but not even having bullet points? Surely there's nothing bad that can come of that?

I know links are generally undesirable in user-generated comment, but is there no way that some sites - like Picasa, Flickr etc - can be whitelisted to be linked from an ad? I for one would find it very useful. I know that the PH hamsters are much more numerous and better trained than they used to be, but you still don't want to overload them by serving a load of pictures you don't have to. Let the picture websites take the load...

PS - I will accept the new rules as a necessary evil when trying to get my car advertised to the right audience, but surely you can see it's a little galling to be charged a tenner for what I consider a lesser product than that which used to be available for free?

PPS - The old ad is probably a record in a database. The new ad is probably a record in a database. How much work would it have been/now be to link the two URLs?

Thanks for the response.

We just don't think that pics embedded in body copy make for a nice experience. The new site gives you more images (12) at a bigger size, and we reckon that's enough to make the phone ring, which is really all that it needs to do.

Bullet points and limited formatting, yes perhaps we should look at that at some point in the future. Fair point.

Your old ad should have a link on it to the new site, if that's what you mean by the PPS?

Just came back to edit my post to say thanks, but you got here before me. The error message on the old ad has gone and my tinyurl is now working again. Yes that's what I meant by the PPS.

You're right about 12 being enough to make the phone ring. Look at it another way: on a site advertising niche cars, where people are deciding whether to travel potentially hundreds of miles to have a look, it might be desirable to have a load of detailed, hi-res pics showing every last detail before hopping in the car. The seller's word only goes so far.

Sorry if I put your back up yesterday. Snide comments about competitors aren't helpful. I was pretty hacked off about the old ad going dead... Smiling again now. Nearly.